The Apollo Applications Program was formed as early as 1966 by NASA headquarters to develop science-based human spaceflight missions using hardware designed for the Apollo program. The Apollo Applications Program was what the planners, including Wernher von Braun, hoped Apollo would lead on to once the initial moon landings had been completed. This was still an early time for space exploration, but we didn’t really know how to live and work in space for long periods. The apollo applications program would take what we developed and run with it to help build our abilities to live in space and on the moon.
In 1965 there were two possible routes depending upon how the funding would hold up. The first case one scenario was that there would be no further Saturn apollo hardware ordered past that of the moon missions. Even with these limitations, the Saturn Apollo office thought there would be 21 Saturn 1b launches, that’s the shorter version without the first main stage and which sat on the milk stool launchpad and would be used for lighter loads and 15 of the full-size Saturn 5 launches by the end of 1973.
The second case two scenario would see an extensive utilization of Saturn apollo capabilities with an earlier focus on a post-apollo national space objective with these extra missions being interleaved would be moon landings and other missions. These would include using the fuel tank of the upper stage of a Saturn v rocket as a wet workshop. Once the fuel in the tank was spent, instead of just jettisoning it, they would vent any fuel left into space and then use the interior as a habitat and workshop.
This idea would later be used for Skylab though this was a dry workshop as it was purpose-built for a task and never used as a fuel tank in space. There were four planned phases to the Apollo phase. One was from 1969 to 71, which would land the first men on the moon and build up experience over the next four missions. These missions corresponded to Apollo 11 to 14.
Phase two from 1972 to 73 would be the Lunar exploration phase. These missions would stay for longer durations and bring larger payloads, including the Lunar Rover, and these ended up corresponding to Apollo 15 to 17.
Phase three was penciled in for 1974 and was a lunar orbital survey mission which was a bit like apollo 8 but with just two astronauts instead of three, and with just the command and service module without the lunar module. This would enter a polar orbit around the moon for 28 days and observe the whole surface of the moon with a suite of instruments, including film cameras, a magnetometer, a radar altimeter gamma-ray spectrometer, and a micrometeorite collection plate in the service module. This job would eventually be done in much greater detail and for much longer by the lunar reconnaissance orbiter robotic probe starting in 2009, and it’s still going to die.
Phase four would be from 1975 to 76 and would be the lunar surface rendezvous and exploration phase and will consist of a dual launch mission. The first would deliver a modified lunar payload module or LPM to the surface of the moon. It is basically a lunar module without the ascent engines and associated parts and fuel tanks to give it a greater payload capability, including food and scientific equipment. This would also act as a shelter for when the astronauts arrived up to three months later.
The second part of a mission would be when the astronauts arrived and would land them near the lunar module shelter. The mission would then stay on the surface for up to 14 days. Over time, it was envisioned that this basic setup would evolve into a lunar base with larger shelters powered by a nuclear reactor with long-range rovers and up to six men staying for up to six months or 180 days at a time.
Another plan was a manned flypast of Venus with a Saturn v used to send a three-man crew which would fly past in the command and service module attached to the second stage fuel tank of a Saturn 1b. Once the fuel had been used the tank would then be used as a wet workshop where the crew would live on a return journey before separating and returning to earth.
But these Apollo Application Program missions were contingent on the funding of around 450 million dollars per year being supported by congress. To keep congress happy, NASA had to deliver on what they had planned with no major hitches. This is where a massive spanner was
thrown into the works.
The Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967, claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee during a plug-out test. Basically a full simulation of a launch but without fueling the rocket. This was a huge blow to Apollo and would lead to a major overhaul of the whole program. But some say that it was a blessing in disguise. The reasoning behind this was that NASA had been racing to keep to the deadline of putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s and had taken, what some say, were unacceptable risks to cut corners and costs.
The Apollo 1 command module was an early design that relied upon a low-pressure pure oxygen environment in space to save weight and complexity compared to a nitrogen-oxygen mix more like we breathe here on earth. The hatch door was also designed to open inwards, so when the fire took hold, the pressure in the cabin increased, making it impossible for the crew to open the door from the inside.
The earlier Mercury in Gemini missions also used a pure oxygen environment and the thinking was that because there’d be no issues there then the same pure oxygen environment would work for Apollo. Even though it was a much more complicated design and the risks were considerably greater. To some in the space industry, this was an accident waiting to happen, and that if the Apollo 1 test had worked and the program had gone ahead with its original design, this kind of accident would have probably happened during a real launch with the subsequent loss of the crew and vehicle.
From that standpoint, it would have been much harder, if not impossible, to try and find the root cause of the accident and could well have ended the program there and then. In fact, we still don’t know exactly what triggered the fire in the command module of Apollo 1, apart from the fact that it was most likely a short circuit in a bundle of wires. One saving grace was that it happened during a test and was on the launchpad, so the command module was still intact and could be gone over in forensic detail.
The fire delayed the program for 21 months. A major redesign of a command module and other systems and a shake-up of NASA’s working practices led to a greater emphasis on safety and fire in particular. But all of this came at the same time as the cost of the Vietnam war was spiraling upwards. President Lyndon Johnson wanted to introduce his version of Roosevelt’s new deal called “the Great Society,” which has a set of domestic programs to reduce civil unrest by eliminating poverty and racial injustice and keeping within a 100 billion dollar budget.
With all these competing interests and congress’s displeasure with NASA’s
performance around the Apollo 1 fire meant it was at the top of the list for budget cuts. They couldn’t cut the whole program because that would renege on the promise that President Kennedy had made in 1961, but what they could do was put a halt to a post-Apollo Applications Program by cutting its budget from 450 million to 122 million dollars a slide which continued under Nixon in 1970.
The scheduled Apollo 20 was canceled, and its Saturn was redesignated to launch the Skylab, which would become the focus of NASA’s post-Apollo plan until the space shuttle, which was meant to come into service in 1979 although it eventually turned up in 1981. Further reductions came as the lunar orbital survey was canceled and the moon missions were cut short. Apollo 18 and 19’s cancellation left Apollo 17 as the sixth and last Apollo manned mission to the moon.
Two more Saturn rockets were used on the following Skylab missions. One on the Apollo Soyuz mission where the American Apollo command and service module docked with the Soviet Soyuz captured in 1975. The handshake between the two crews seemed a fitting end to the space race, which began 18 years earlier with the launch of the soviet sputnik one.